Architects

Inspiring Architects

Nowadays, all around us we see excellent works of architecture and design making our world a more artistic and expressive place to live. We find inspiration everywhere and in everything. The modern legendary architects also find inspirations in things like sails, brown paper bags, folds and curves and much more. These wonderful architects with commendable skill come up with these designs by thinking out of the box and never fail to surprise us. The following are some of the architects that truly inspire me.

1. Frank Gehry

It's not often the case that architects grow to become household names. But Frank Gehry has never lived by any common practice. The award-winning architect has spent more than a half-century disrupting the very meaning of design within architecture.

Many of the legendary American-Canadian architects works have become world- renowned attractions. From the iconic Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (which Philip Johnson called “the greatest building of our time") to the Foundation Louis Vuitton in Paris, Gehry has proven time and again the force that's produced when whimsical design is done masterfully. Born in Canada in 1929, Gehry attended the University of Southern California and the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He began his career in Los Angeles working for Victor Gruen Associates and Pereira and Luckman. After a brief stint in Paris working with Andre Remondet, he returned to California and started his own firm in 1962. Today, Gehry is known for his complex and ambitious designs.

Gehry was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 1989. A man with seemingly no limits, there is no bad time to celebrate Gehry's oeuvre.

Some of his best works are shown below.

2. Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid, the founder of Zaha Hadid Architecture, is internationally known for her built, academic and theoretical work. She was also awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004. Each of her projects include extensive research of over 30 years in the fields of urbanism and architectural designs.

Her amazing contribution to architecture is recognized by respected institutions like The Forbes where she was listed as on of 'World's Most Powerful Women' and many more. Zaha's pioneering vision redefined architecture and designs of the 21st century. She captured imaginations and ideas from across the globe. Zaha's work is known to see form and space pulled into breath-taking, fluid spatial progressions.

From Beirut to Beijing, Zaha Hadid's distinctive buildings have transformed skylines around the world. Nicknamed the "Queen of the Curve," the late architect will be remembered for her bold, fluid designs, including London's Olympic aquatics center and the Heydar Aliyev Center in Azerbaijan.

"Hadid's intricately variegated curves offer more adaptive versatility to push into irregular sites ... to give room to internal requirements where needed," Schumacher writes. "The curves and curvilinear compositions display lawful and coherent trajectories that we can recognize as coherent and legible figures, each with its own poise, dynamism or degree of fluidity."

"Zaha Hadid Architects: Redefining Architecture and Design," published by Images Publishing.

Hadid captured movement and life in her fluid and curvy designs. She lives on through her neo-futuristic buildings and will continue to inspire many.

Below are some of Zaha Hadid's extraordinary works.